Self-styled Utah prophet gets 15 years for child sodomy

In this Feb. 20, 2018, file photo, Samuel Shaffer stands during a court hearing in Cedar City, Utah. Shaffer, a self-styled Utah prophet who led a doomsday cult and secretly married young girls because of his beliefs in polygamy has been sentenced to at least 15 years in prison. (James Dobson/The Spectrum via AP, Pool, File)

This undated file photo provided by the Iron County Sheriff's office shows Samuel Shaffer. Shaffer, a self-styled Utah prophet who led a doomsday cult and secretly married young girls because of his beliefs in polygamy has been sentenced to at least 15 years in prison. (Iron County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.

SALT LAKE CITY — A self-styled Utah prophet who led a doomsday cult and secretly married young girls because of his beliefs in polygamy has been sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.

Samuel Shaffer, 35, was sentenced Wednesday in the small central city of Manti after pleading guilty to one felony count of child sodomy, the Desert News reported.

Other charges were dropped in exchange for the guilty plea, including bigamy, lewdness involving a child and an additional sodomy count.

Shaffer was charged in December 2017 after police raided a remote desert compound in Iron County and found four girls. He was accused of abusing an 8-year-old girl related to a member of his group called Knights of the Crystal Blade.

His fellow self-styled prophet, John Coltharp, 34, married the other two young girls. Coltharp pleaded guilty to sodomy and child bigamy charges earlier this month. His sentencing is scheduled for August.

At the hearing Wednesday, Shaffer told Judge Marvin Bagley that he had hoped to have a family and grow old with the child.

“I sincerely believed that child marriage was a correct principle from God. And I’ve seen the consequences of what’s happened, and I know that I shouldn’t have done it now,” Shaffer said. “But I sincerely believed that the practice was correct at the time.”

Shaffer was sentenced last month to at least 26 years in prison after pleading guilty to child rape and abuse charges. The new sentence won’t extend his prison term.

“I’m not aware of any religion in this world that justifies an adult having a sexual relationship with an 8-year-old girl,” the judge said. “Certainly it’s a violation of Utah law.”

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.